Aging ain't for sissies. Neither is chronic pain.

Posts tagged ‘television’

Like a lot of people I am not a fan of TV commercials. There are *so* many of them that are shown *so* often. I mean c’mon, how many erectile dysfunction commercials does a man need to see before he calls his doctor? And how does having a bath tub in the middle of the woods relate to ED? Don’t even get me started on Viva Viagra. Poor Elvis.

Some commercials make me ponder company policy. Case in point…beer ads. Beer commercials let us know they use only the finest ingredients to get just the right flavor of beer. The question is who tests the beer before it’s put on the market? Are there designated testers with company-appointed designated drivers to get them home safely at the end of a hard day at the office? Does the company offer onsite AA meetings to prevent beer testers from becoming alcoholics on company time?

Who is the imaginative goon that came up with all the Geico ads? You’ve got cavemen, a gecko, a stack of money with big eyeballs and a talking pothole. A talking pothole people. Seriously, what kind of bizarre, eccentric visionary conjures up a talking pothole with a southern accent? Considering he or she is probably making a ton of money off their ideas I would have to say a brilliant mind.

Swiffer is giving Geico a run for its money in the imagination category. They offer us despondent feather dusters and dejected mops. I was unaware my lowly mop has feelings. I really need to become more in tune with the emotional needs of my cleaning tools.

Then there are the commercials that make me go, “hmm.” One in particular is the Life Lock identity theft protection ads. The CEO of Life Lock kept putting his social security number in their ads, basically daring someone to steal it. Someone did. Yet the CEO says the system works because of the 87 attempts to steal his identity, only one succeeded. It only takes one time and then you spend the next 563 years in identity theft hell trying to reclaim yourself.

Over the weekend I saw a TV ad from the National Football League aimed at its players. In light of the recent attention being brought to concussions and head injuries in players, apparently they are trying to get these guys to watch their noggin. The gist of the ad is that players need to recognize the symptoms of a concussion, report it and not play until their battered brains are better. Well………..duh. I would think that if a player can negotiate a 100 million dollar contract then they should, at the very least, be able to take a break from playing when all things cerebral become fuzzy.

The winner of the creepy commercial category goes to Burger King. Their king is creepy. Just creepy. Second runner up is Castrol Motor Oil. Stop thinking with your dipstick Jimmy!

There’s no getting around it. As long as I am a television viewer I will be bombarded with a seemingly never-ending string of mind-numbing commercials every 15 minutes. It’s the nature of the advertising beast. All I can hope is that the next time I’m out and about I don’t run into the Slap Chop guy. Tacos, fettuccine, linguine, bikini!